While I have some big policy differences from Malkin, I still imagine that she would be a wonderful person to debate. She’s smart, she’s quick on her mental feet, and has a great personality. Having a few martinis and hashing out differences in viewpoints on everything from gay marriage to national security would be fun with someone like her. Any discussion with Alex Jones and his cartoonish, crackpot fellow travelers looks to be damned near impossible.

It’s also instructive of what happens when you disagree with the fringe left that claims to believe in free speech: you get threatened, shouted down, harassed, and at last one guy was assaulted (albeit in a minor way). And then these devotees of intellectual debate start shouting: “Fascist! Fascist!”